Here are my recent astro photos from Mayo’s International Dark Sky Park. County Mayo is of course in the north-west of the Republic of Ireland.
During this short period of skywatching I saw a meteor streak across the sky. It was amazing.
The weather on this trip was typical August in Ireland – rainy! Luckily there was a couple of clear hours one night, and the Milky Way was clear to the naked eye.
Here’s the view south with the Milky Way stretching across the sky. The shapes at the base of the photo are a conifer plantation. The light pollution is coming from the direction of Foxford.
I love the images of a glowing window with stars above. Here you can see the plough (Ursa major) over the rooftop.
Phone pics of a shed that, year on year, ‘returns to nature’.
These are ferns growing on the inside. This is probably an old stone dwelling or animal shelter that was rebuilt as a tool shed and store in the second have of the 20th century.
The orange is algae or fungi, like a portal into the past.
In April 2023 I visited Achill Island in County Mayo for the first time in 10 years.
I have happy memories of a visit to Achill in March 2013 with my parents. Returning with my mum in April after the passing of my dad in 2021, we followed the same route as a decade ago, stopping at Cloughmore to see the Atlantic’s wild waves crashing against the rocks. It brought back strong memories of that last visit a decade earlier, and thoughts of dad heading out onto similar rock formations to fish, further south in Cork during 1990s summer holidays.
In the surrounding sheep-cropped grasslands pipits, likely the rock variety, skipped and flew between boulders. A man cast a drone along the coastal edge before packing his kit (and three generations of his family) into the car and went off again.
I walked around looking for lichens to add to my iNaturalist map and picked off two small pieces of quartz that came away with ease.
The power of the waves, the overwhelming sound of the sea – the hiss and crash – and the sheer beauty of the view north along the coastline silenced me. See for yourself.
If you were to head directly west from here by sea, you would arrive in Newfoundland or Labrador in eastern Canada. My relatives made similar journeys, some of them never came home but instead built lives of their own in New York City. Some were of Irish heritage and were born in America, but returned to Ireland.
I recently read Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. I’ve been on an Irish fiction streak, in some ways to try and understand the experiences of my Irish relatives, who made the same crossings and who also built lives in Brooklyn before the book’s setting of 1950. Other than Toibin I’ve read most of the Donal Ryan novels, where migration is again a key theme.
Eileen, my great-great auntEva, my long-lost great grandmother
Two of my relatives who went to America are my long-lost great-grandmother Eva Sugrue (right), and her sister Eileen (left). My family have confirmed Eileen was married in the same Brooklyn courthouse that progressed one of the many cases against ex-President Donald Trump, which is nice. No one in my family today, or even my grandmother, knew Eva (her mother) or Eileen. That mystery trickles down, and it was only through the diligence and commitment of my family’s desire to find out more that the photos above ever came to light.
On our way off of Achill we stopped at a craft shop. I wanted to buy some proper knitwear (oh yes) and a few gifts for home. We got talking to a woman called Kathleen who was running the shop. She had lived in London, Littlehampton, and Winchester, the latter when her husband was working on the creation of the M3 cutting through the South Downs at Twyford. They had lived in a caravan park while the work was being undertaken, a community of Irish families cropping up with all the workers there to do the job.
In talking we covered all the major issues: English nationalism, Brexit, Trump, Putin. She had a way of saying, ‘I don’t care either way, but…’. We also discussed the ‘shock’ of living in rural West Sussex compared to most other places, how beautiful the South Downs were.
Kathleen was readying herself for the influx of American tourists expected in line with a visit from US President Joe Biden, ‘a Mayo man’, as the whole world now knows. She asked if we would be staying around for Biden’s visit, but we were already planning to leave for Dublin before his arrival. The payment machine didn’t work as the signal was so poor, and she felt embarrassed that she’d have to ask the Americans to pay in cash.
Achill has a long history of people coming and going as Biden’s family did, though particularly to England, as the video above shows.
I went for an evening walk down the old trackway to the foot of the mountain. The track was flooded, meaning that without wellies I had to find tussocks and rocks to move further. Where the track turned, I noticed a ram of some kind grazing up ahead. After a time, I realised it was a goat, most likely a wild goat from the flock that roams the mountain. I had never seen one so close before and began to feel some concern for it. Why was it down here in the floodplain rather than up there out of reach among the boulders and bogs?
Its bleating was weak, distressed. I felt anxiety rising, that I needed to act. I looked at my phone about guidance for finding a wild animal of this size, but it was stuff I already knew and I realised I wasn’t acting rationally. I walked forward, a little fearful that the goat may show aggression, so when it turned to look at me, I backed away and waited.
The goat lowered itself to a sitting position, bleating in a way that suggested distress, weakness. Its voice was breaking, fading. It tried to stand but its legs gave way. It lay with its head on the ground, bleating again. I hadn’t moved, realising what was happening. Its stomach stopped moving. I approached it where it lay, its ears and lips were trembling. Then, stillness. Its eye remained open, and did not move. It had passed away.
A life lived wild on the mountain had ended at its foot, in a very short space of time. There was very little visible suffering, though some fear as it realised it was losing its ability to graze and trot.
I continued on and headed up the mountain. Seeing the death of the wild goat made me want to press on, a gentle reminder that all life has its limits. To the west, Nephin appeared in the distance, Lough Conn as silvery as ever at its foot. In the south-west Croagh Patrick could be see behind a rank of wind turbines. As I reached a curve in the path, where a cleft had been carved into the hillside, a small group of wild goats appeared on the hilltop. We watched eachother for a while, before they headed off out of sight.
I reached the top for the first time since 2017. A broken flock of sheep circled me against the horizon of rocky outcrops, mountains and distant loughs. Being up there will always remind me of the times me and my Dad made it up, always out of breath and red-faced.
Surrounded by bogs and scars of turf cutting, I looked down to try find an unusual species of some kind that I might not see elsewhere, due to the remoteness of the place. Down in a small bit of bog, with sphagnum and other mosses, a group of golden mushrooms were growing.
I had a second camera with me that had a macro lens attached for ease. I took some photos, unsure of the species. Its gills were not unlike a waxcap (hygrocybe) but I knew so little about boglife that I was happy simply to find some shrooms.
I’m still waiting on feedback on iNaturalist, so this remains a mystery. Unless someone reading this knows and can add some information in the comments?
I headed back down the mountain and along the track. There the wild goat rested. I hadn’t imagined its death, and it wasn’t trying to fool me. I went back to the cottage unnerved, reminding myself of a life lived wild and free in the Ox Mountains.
It’s January 2023 and my podcast, Unlocking Landscapes, is 2 years old! Thanks to everyone who has contributed and supported so far.
I do this podcast at my own cost so if you want to support it (it costs a basic £100 annually to host my Podbean account) you can ‘buy me a coffee/camomile’ here: https://ko-fi.com/djgwild
I haven’t posted for a while, mainly for professional and technical reasons. The biggest issue is that I needed to upgrade my ailing desktop PC, which I have now done. It’s in much better shape now, so no more IT excuses but hopefully more podcasts.
You can listen via YouTube here:
Or via the Podbean stream here:
In September I spent a week in Mayo in Ireland and recorded two podcasts. One is an early evening walk in the Ox Mountains, encountering rickety gates and performing ravens. The second one (still to come) is a walk with Seán Lysaght, which I can’t wait to share with you. I’ve been a big fan of Seán’s writing for over a decade, so it was a massive honour to spend an afternoon walking with him. More on that one soon!
In the Ox Mountains I go for a walk, describing the surrounding landscape, capturing two ravens (acoustically) as they fly close by from where the breed in the hills. I also talk a bit about issues with cottages which aren’t connected to mains water, amongst many other things.
Here are some landscape images from a March visit to Mayo which I’ve been posting a bit of recently. This landscape fascinates me in many ways: the cultural history (of which my family has links), the ecology and geology.
My family’s cottage is located near a mountain range that would probably be classified as hills in the UK, but their Irish name translates as Wintry Mountain (Slieve Gamph). The English version is the Ox Mountains. It was said that people once lived in these hills – granite, heather and peat bog – in simple stone cottages until the famine. I haven’t managed to locate anything resembling a disused cottage there as yet, but the wider landscape is littered with megalithic tombs, stone circles and other significant archaeology.
We arrived in Mayo to find the mountain burnt across a mile or more. This beautiful landscape with its rare plants, bog habitats, feral goats and moorland nesting birds, was decimated. We asked local people – who started it? One man said it could have been a farmer who just wanted a bit more grass, another woman said it was someone just “lighting a match”. Whoever it was, the authorities are not happy and it made plenty of news out this way. It was also an issue in Wicklow and Kerry.
Sphagnum moss burnt red by the heatWild primroseGolden saxifrage
The mountains had not been completely charred by the fire, with plenty of plants having survived, though it had spread to areas I had never seen affected before. Our local neighbour said she had never seen so many fires as in recent years. Climate change is no doubt making these moorlands and their mountains of bracken more vulnerable to wildfires (or otherwise) but the issue still remains one of misguided land management, as well as pure arson.
Having worked in the management of publicly accessible green spaces I can tell you there is a minority everywhere who want to just burn stuff for the fun of it.
Nephin
In 2013 I wrote a piece about visiting Mayo while my grandfather was in a nursing home. He passed away 2 years later from dementia. Back then we arrived to fires burning close to the cottage, like something from a movie. I remember a radio report saying there were gorse fires simply caused by direct sunlight and dry weather. You can read that here.
In March I visited Wild Nephin National Park at the Atlantic edge of Ireland, in Co. Mayo. I thought it was called Ballycroy National Park, but the name seems to have been updated.
The mountains here are the Nephin Beg range. There’s a great visitor centre here and a brilliant cafe run by a very friendly couple. I’d seen these mountains from afar for years but this was my first time in the National Park.
The National Park itself is said to be home to golden eagles, which I hadn’t realised were present in Ireland. It’s also where one of Europe’s largest blanket bogs resides, a special type in this region known as Atlantic blanket bog. Great name!
If you want to read more about this landscape I would recommend Sean Lysaght’s book Wild Nephin. Copies are available in the cafe also. I really recommend it, also Sean’s poems.
I’ve tried to work out the names of the mountains but may have some of them wrong. I’d welcome corrections in the comments and will amend.
Here are some images I took during our visit to Ballycroy:
Nephin mountainScree and stream bed on NephinMountain I don’t know the name of with cottage for scaleCroagh Patrick, possibly the most famous mountain in IrelandMulranny view towards mountainsSheep with lambsView of Croagh Patrick from Mulranny, across Clew BayCleggan Mountain Trail (boardwalk just visible on the left) and view towards AchillCnoc Leitreach (Owenduff Hill) I think!The Ballycroy visitor centre boardwalk loopSunny day in BallycroyGorse in flowerInishbiggle mountain (I think)Views towards Nephin Beg mountain rangeLocal farming in BallycroyAbandoned farmstead near Ballycroy. Note the succession of rushes, grasses and gorse onto the green of the ‘improved’ grassland.
Unlocking Landscapes 